


𝐃𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐨 🁡 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑑𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑃𝑖𝑛𝑜𝑐𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑜

by Adrenalineshots, sonshineandshowers, TheFibreWitch



Series: Domino 🁡 [10]
Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Case Fic, Digital Art, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hallucinations, Harassment, Health Emergency, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mental Health Issues, Metafiction, Murder Mystery, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Surrealism, Teenage Bright, Trauma, Unreliable Narrator, Video, a lot of really strange stuff that happens in altered states of consciousness, anxiousness, reader-driven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26503171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adrenalineshots/pseuds/Adrenalineshots, https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonshineandshowers/pseuds/sonshineandshowers, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFibreWitch/pseuds/TheFibreWitch
Summary: Selecting 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑑𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑃𝑖𝑛𝑜𝑐𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑜 from the bookshelf, Malcolm travels through his own mind.Read this story at:https://www.thedominostory.com/#the-adventures-of-pinocchioThis book is one part of the Domino series. If you have not yet read thePrefaceorIntroduction, please head there first.
Relationships: Gil Arroyo/Jackie Arroyo
Series: Domino 🁡 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1926451
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1
Collections: Domino 🁡, Prodigal Son Big Bang 2020 - Saturday Posts





	𝐃𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐨 🁡 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑑𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑃𝑖𝑛𝑜𝑐𝑐ℎ𝑖𝑜

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jameena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jameena/gifts), [MissScorp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissScorp/gifts), [ProcrastinatingSab](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProcrastinatingSab/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Adventures of Pinocchio](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/685303) by Carlo Collodi. 



> This book is one part of the Domino series. If you have not yet read the [Preface](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497927/chapters/64577434#workskin) or [Introduction](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497927/chapters/64588537#workskin), please head there first.
> 
> Betaed by the wonderful [Jameena](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jameena/), [MissScorp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissScorp/), and [ProcrastinatingSab](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProcrastinatingSab/).
> 
> Credit to the creators and their works that inspired and were referenced in this work:  
>  **— Inspiration:**[The Adventures of Pinocchio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Pinocchio) \- Carlo Collodi  
>  **— Cover Song:**[I’ve Got No Strings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAykOz1gWi4) \- Pinocchio

[](https://www.thedominostory.com/images/full/the-adventures-of-pinocchio.jpg) |   
---|---  
  
The bathroom is a mess, the smell of piss settled into the grout, left to stand for the rest of all time. Regardless of how much bleach gets poured over the tile, there is no way the smell is coming out, etched into Malcolm’s mind in permanent memorial.

When he came in, he had bypassed someone at the urinal and hurried into one of the stalls. He hadn’t been thinking — the spot he’d ducked into in the middle has twice the traffic rattling around him on either side. An airport bathroom tucked at the end of the terminal, so each time passengers disembark, it’s the first place they go.

Many, many men have come and gone. Malcolm rests with his back against the stall, his arms crossed over his gut, wrestling with whether he’ll be sick again or lose another battle with his intestines. Slight frame shaking, one part of his mind tends to agree with Gabrielle that his symptoms are all in his mind. Another part knows being called to testify on the stand in another one of his father’s cases has deleterious effects, even several years later.

He can’t stop shaking. Even his breathing techniques fly in one ear and out the other as fast as he can pant. As much as Gil, Jackie, his mother, and the whole judicial process had tried to keep him separated from his father, looks and gestures were enough to puppet him back into his fears.

 _You could’ve just done this whole thing on tape_ , the memory of his mother’s voice scolds him. He’s nearly a man, will be technically defined as one in a few years, and he needed to face his father man-to-man. _Dr. Whitly, Dr. Whitly, Dr. Whitly_ , his brain repeats, trying to snap himself into recognizing he needs a healthy amount of distance to survive.

Surviving doesn’t feel like hyperventilating in a bathroom stall, even the carefully selected walls for his breakdown now not where he wants to be. It’s all too much, leaving him fighting not to slither to the floor, a litany of germs waiting for him there.

“Kid?” Gil’s voice comes through the door. The sounds of the bathroom continue on, the other stalls popping open and shut, flushing, sinks rushing, and hand dryers blowing.

Malcolm takes another snuffly breath in, his nose and throat wet with phlegm.

“Hey — could you come out?” Gil asks. Then, directed away from the stall, Malcolm hears him say, “Waiting for my son,” followed by a grumble from another man. A few more grumbles happen over the next few minutes, and Malcolm wonders what Gil looks like loitering outside a bathroom stall to passersby.

“We can go back to our house,” Gil says. “We don’t need to do this today.”

A trip that Gil and Jackie had offered specifically to get him out of the city after he testified. To visit Quantico. To see the area he might end up working in if he ever decides to apply to the FBI. Or to go a little bit further and spend a few days at the beach if they want. They’d left it all up to him. They’d offered him everything, and he’s standing in a bathroom stall, paralyzed with fear.

He’ll never be free. Whittled from the now infamous Dr. Whitly, he’s forever the ventriloquist’s dummy. He sobs, unable to see how he can rectify their trip.

“Bright, it’s not a problem, we’re not upset,” Gil assures him. “We’d like to take you back to our house if you can come out.”

Malcolm clicks the lock open, but doesn’t move the door. Body swaying forward, he holds himself up leaning against the toilet paper dispenser.

“I’m gonna help you out, alright kid?”

“Ummhmm,” he mumbles, and Gil has his arm around him, leading him to the sinks.

Gil takes care of everything — soaping his hands, wetting paper towels and wiping his face, rinsing him off, all the while holding him steady with an arm around his waist. He leads him out of the bathroom, saying, “Let’s go home” against his head as they return to the airport terminal. Jackie wraps an arm around him from the other side, and the three of them walk out of the airport, she carrying his backpack on her back and pulling her and Gil’s shared bag behind her.

They don’t press him to talk. Jackie climbs into the back seat and Gil guides Malcolm in next to her so she can hold him for the drive to the Arroyo’s house. Malcolm sighs, his tears still flowing, his body still shaking, wrestling with every bit of his father’s influence.

“It’s okay, Bright,” Jackie says, stroking his hair. He can still smell the rank stench of the bathroom — he can’t imagine what Jackie must smell being so close to him. Gil will end up wanting his car detailed. “Is there anything we can do to help you feel more comfortable?”

He squeezes her tighter, their presence the only thing he wants, _needs_. His joints ache from every direction he’s been twisted, yanked by his father’s influence.

“Babe, skip the trip to Fred’s — we’ll go straight home,” she says to Gil, squeezing his shoulder over the seat.

“You wanted ice cream?” Malcolm mumbles.

“Earlier, I thought you might, but we have cones at home — we can make you one there.”

“I’m sorry I’m not any fun.”

“You don’t need to apologize, honey. It’s been a long day. We’re both very proud of you.”

“I still want to see it someday.”

“We will,” Gil assures him, glancing over his shoulder at the two of them while he stops at a light.

“Are you going to send me home now that we’re not going on vacation?” Malcolm asks.

“Of course not,” Jackie says. “You’re welcome with us as long as you want. Always are.”

“I can’t be in the house right now,” he tries to explain, even feels like he never wants to set foot in there again, but it’s a concept that rolls around his tongue instead of being released.

“We’ll do whatever you want,” she tells him. “This trip was all about you, anyway.”

“Lay on the couch with a movie. You and Gil laughing.”

Jackie chuckles and rubs his back. “Okay, kid.”

— ◌◯◌ —

"On a scale of one to ten, how much pain are you in?" the nurse asks Malcolm.

His twelve-year-old form sits on the edge of the gurney, Jackie perched a little ways down the cot from him. He looks to her in place of answering.

"Malcolm, it's okay.” Jackie squeezes the mattress between them instead of him. "There's a chart up there." She points to a set of smiley and frowny faces. "You've got to be in pain."

He’d fallen through a few tree branches while he scrambled to hide and landed on his wrist in a shock that halted his fleeing. Jackie had pulled him out of the tree he wouldn't climb out of, and Gil had driven them to the hospital.

"Kid, you can point or use your fingers — you don't have to talk," Gil says from where he sits across from them. Surveying the whole conversation inside of the curtained area in the emergency room, he watches for any sign the kid will panic again. He wants to pull Malcolm into a hug, assure him that he’s safe, but they’re stuck in a limbo where neither one of them can get close enough to complete the action.

The nurse pulls the chart from the wall and holds it out to Malcolm. He uses his good arm to point at the smiley face zero. The kid’s wrist is visibly broken — they’re just waiting on an order for an x-ray to confirm. “Malcolm,” Jackie prods.

“I’m fine,” Malcolm says quietly to his knees.

The kid’s arm clutched into his stomach like a broken wing, Gil knows he’s anything but fine. The nurse lets it go, but when the doctor later moves Malcolm’s arm for examination, his screech carves into Gil’s mind. It isn’t pain — it’s being touched by someone who isn’t familiar when he is already keyed up. Malcolm throws himself at Jackie and burrows into her chest, only the safety in her arms getting the family through x-rays and a cast.

Looking at Bright in a hospital bed some twenty years later being prodded by a nurse as she checks his vitals, the kid’s screech reverberates in his brain. Is Bright panicking in his sleep, trying to avoid the touch? Would he protest if he were awake? Is he in pain he can’t verbalize? All of those scenarios weigh on Gil’s mind, leaving him wanting to pull the kid into a hug and take care of him until he can care for himself.

Wrapping his arms around his middle, Gil leans back in his chair after the nurse leaves and returns to watching over his kid.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Head back to the [Bookshelf](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26497927/chapters/64588570#workskin) to pick another book. :)


End file.
